


Casting Spells and Casting Shadows

by Dankylosaur



Category: Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:55:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28434999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dankylosaur/pseuds/Dankylosaur
Summary: Luz Noceda is trapped in a fantasy world! But instead of a world of witches and demons, she's been taken from her home and dropped into a world of wizards and dragons. One where names have power and where true names have true power.
Kudos: 1





	1. Sparrowhawk

Luz awoke face-up, clutching at her chest and gasping for air. She wheezed and coughed, loosing not air or phlegm, but water. Her mind and senses returning to her, she noted water’s taste: salty, like ocean water. She coughed again, spitting out more of the stuff. She gasped repeatedly; finally able to breathe; and curled up into a ball on the floor.

Floor? She curled her hand into a fist, running her fingernails against the wood planks below her. Hadn’t she just been on the curb in front of her house? She knew the sidewalk was made of cement, or asphalt, or whatever, not wood planks. Her neighborhood wasn’t _that bad_.

She heard something. Words. A voice. She looked up, almost directly into the sun. She groaned and shielded her eyes. The last time she looked up the sky was overcast. She heard the voice again. It was deep and gentle, but she didn’t understand its words. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she lowered her hand and met the gaze of the man kneeling over her.

The man looked down at Luz, worry in one eye and confusion in the other. His complexion was similar to hers. He ran a dark hand across his brow, wiping away sweat and water, stopping just short of touching the set of long, white scars that ran down the side of his face. He spoke again. Again, Luz didn’t understand him.

“I-I’m sorry?” she half-said, half-coughed. He spoke again and reached out a hand. She leaned back. “Do you speak English?” Now the man looked confused. _“¿Hablas español?_ ”

The man’s expression shifted, still worried but now more curious than concerned. He didn’t speak English or Spanish. Did he speak French? Had she fallen into some sort of Canadian pocket dimension? He picked himself up and offered his hand to Luz. With all of her language options exhausted, she took his hand and he pulled her up, only for her to immediately stumble and fall again. She caught herself, wrapping her arms around the mast of the boat. Boat. They were on a boat.

Luz looked around frantically. There was nothing but ocean in all directions, as far as the eye could see. She looked down at herself. She was soaking wet. The man spoke again. He unclasped his cloak, revealing a long-sleeved tunic underneath, and held it out to her; hand-made from the looks of it. She took it from him. It was thick and heavy, made more for utility than for comfort. She nodded her head to him, wrapped the cloak around herself, and sunk down to the back of the boat.

The man slowly nodded back at her and got to work, lowering his boat’s sail. Luz stared at him, there being nothing else to look at for miles around. He was maybe somewhere in her mom’s age range, probably a few years younger than her. He was taller than her mom too, but not by much. He dropped the sail, looked back at her, and placed a hand on the mast. He spoke again, this time only saying a single word. The wind shifted above them, running up the boat and feeding directly into the sail. Content with his work, the man knelt down and picked up one of the bags; burlap or hide, Luz couldn’t really tell; resting by the mast.

Luz stared up at the sail with a mix of confusion and wonder. The wind doesn’t just change direction like that, does it? The man seemed so ready for it, and it changed right when he spoke. Was he some kind of super high-level survivalist or some kind of… spellcaster? It made about as much sense as blacking out in front of her house and waking up in the middle of the ocean. He reached into his bag and pulled out a small wheat cake, holding it out to Luz. He was no Good Witch Azura or a shirtless prince with a dark past, but he was kind and gentle, reasonably handsome; scars and all; and he might have been able to control the wind. Definitely not the worst first impression for a fantasy world.

She took the wheat cake and ate it. It was plain and dry, but it wasn’t salt water. He returned to the front of the boat and watched the horizon. “So, uh… You got a name, stranger?” He saved her from drowning, she could at least try to get his name. He looked back at her, obviously not understanding. She wasn’t expecting him to understand. “Like… so my name is Luz Noceda.” She pointed at herself and repeated: “Luz Noceda.” The man arched an eyebrow and cocked his head away from her. Did he get what she was try to get across? Why was he so surprised?

There was a long silence. Eventually he pointed back at her. “Luz Noceda?”

“Yes!” She nodded pointed at herself again. “I’m Luz Noceda! And your name is…” She pointed at him now. His eyebrow dropped. He chuckled, shook his head, and turned back to the horizon. After a moment, he turned his head to her and spoke another word, different from the one he used to change the wind. Luz pointed to him and repeated the word. The man shrugged and nodded before going back to watching the waves.

Luz woke up some time later. The sun was low in the sky, reflecting amber against the ocean’s calm waves. The swaying of the boat must have lulled her to sleep earlier, but as she looked around her, she noticed something which shot her awake. The man was gone. She picked herself up and stumbled to the front end of the boat, calling out to him with the word he had said to her when she told him her name. She peered over the edge of the boat. Had he fallen? Was he drowning?

She turned around to check the other side and noticed something resting on the horizon. A massive galleon rode the waves behind her, pushed along by three broad sails and two-dozen oars. Just as she noticed it, something took flight off of the galleon and made its way to her. Luz stumbled backwards as a hawk landed on the edge of the boat in front of her. She sat up to face the hawk. In the time it took her to blink, the hawk disappeared and the man reappeared in its place, holding a wooden staff as long as he was tall in his hand. So yes, he was definitely a wizard.

“Gwuh!” She flopped backwards again. _“¡Dios_ \- Y-you just- You can do…” She took a few deep breaths, like her therapist told her, and collected her thoughts. She looked up at him, panic giving way to awe. “I know you can’t understand me… but that was really cool.”

The man; the wizard; looked down at her, worry giving way to more curiosity. He rubbed his chin, hemming and humming. Had he not expected a reaction like that? Why wouldn’t he? Had Luz fallen into a fantasy world where magic was really commonplace? Luz’s mind raced at the thought. Could it be taught? Maybe she could learn to use magic like him! The wizard strode past her and untied the sail again. It had been tied up this whole time and she hadn’t even noticed. She was too busy freaking out over the fact that he was gone. “Oh. I mean, y’know…” she said to him, “I didn’t know you could do that. The bird thing.”

Night fell. Luz laid on her back and stared at the stars, doing her best to ignore her worry and fear. Out at sea, miles away from civilization, the stars shone like she had never seen them. There was a very good chance she had never seen these stars at all, actually. Unless the world she found herself in existed in the same universe as her own, on some distant planet, so far away from Earth that humanity would die out before radio waves could ever reach it. She scanned the night sky, looking for constellations she knew and coming up empty-handed.

The wind suddenly died above her. She sat up and turned to the man, now standing above her. He held his staff perpendicular, looking at one of its ends, and spoke yet another word. This time, a faint grayish light bloomed from the end of his staff, illuminating his scarred face.

“Woah,” Luz said without meaning to. The wizard looked at her and then back to his staff. He passed it from his left hand to his right and held it out to her expectantly. Luz stood up and held out her hand. “You want me to…” He held it out farther and tilted his head toward the sail. Luz hesitated, then snatched the staff with both hands. She looked it up and down, doing her best not to freak out. The black wood staff was light, yet sturdy. It was made from… yew? Luz had made more than a few wands and staffs over the last summer vacation, so she felt like she knew yew when she saw it. It bore no intricate design, save for a silver ringlet near the center which had inscribed on it a rune which, to her non-surprise, Luz did not recognize. It looked important, though.

The wizard grabbed the staff and gently guided her to the mast, leaving her holding his magic light over the back of the sail. “Sorry,” Luz said. The wizard got to work tying up the sail. “I just… it’s a really cool staff.” The wizard said nothing back, as expected. Luz turned her head towards the front of the boat and saw why they were stopping. Dry land lay directly ahead of them, its faint silhouette over the endless expanse made visible by dots of torchlight.

The wizard finished tying up the sail and grabbed a pair of oars he had resting in the corner. Just like his staff, he held one of them out to Luz. Decidedly less excited about this big fancy stick than the last, she sighed and took the oar into her free hand. They had a lot of rowing to do before they’d hit land.

The town they had landed at was a blur. Out of the boat, the wizard was free to travel at his own pace, and his pace was fast. Luz only had time to glance at the architecture, ancient beyond medieval but still new, and gaze in awe at the pair of stone dragons carved in front of the town’s gate. She tempered her excitement. Just because this world had statues of dragons didn’t necessarily mean dragons actually existed there. If it did, that would mean her world also had dragons; a theory which she was as of yet unable to prove. The wizard woke her from her daydream and waved for her to continue. Their path led further in-land.

The wizard was tireless in his stride, but he was mercifully patient with Luz once their hike had begun, stopping with her when she needed to catch her breath or rest her weak nerd legs, which was often. Every time they stopped, she would wonder why he bothered walking. He could magic himself into a bird and fly away, couldn’t he do the same for her? An hours-long trek up a steep, if straight, road led them to a village of maybe half a dozen houses, small enough to actually be considered a hamlet.

Still, the wizard’s stride didn’t break. Luz followed him to one particular house, smaller than the others and relatively isolated. The orange glow of a firepit shone through its windows. He tapped on the door with the end of his staff and waited. No response. He knocked again. Still no response. Apparently taking the silence as an invitation, he pulled the door open and let himself in. The old man they found inside, sitting with his back to the door, turned his head to face them. He stood up and the two men began to talk.

Luz didn’t know what they were saying, but it was obvious they were talking about her. The wizard gestured to her frequently. The old man gazed at her with wise eyes, running his dark hand through his white beard. He spoke rarely, letting the younger man carry most of the conversation, but Luz could feel when he did speak. His soft voice echoed through her ears and reverberated through her bones. All tiredness left her and her eyes went wide. This wasn’t just two men speaking! It was a young wizard consulting with his old master!

Another voice spoke up behind them, saying the name the younger wizard had given Luz. Luz turned around. Standing in the frame of the door was another girl, maybe a year or two older than her. She jumped back when Luz turned to her and swept a strand of long, black hair away from her pale face and eyes. Luz took a step back herself. “Sorry…”

The old man looked at the two girls and then back to his student. He held out a hand to the two girls and supposedly told a joke, if the younger man’s chuckling was anything to go by. The dark-haired girl looked back and forth between the men and Luz, her interest increasing as their conversation went on. Finally, the old man sighed. He gestured to his entire house, a single room, and spoke again, this time in a questioning tone. The young man pointed his staff at the shelf in the corner of the room, lined with books, journals, and other presumably-magical knick-knacks, just to the right of the door. They spoke a bit more before approaching the shelf.

The younger wizard spoke: “Goha.” The dark-haired girl spoke in return and they talked for a bit. The girl left just as the two men began struggling to move the shelf, both of them visibly surprised by how much it weighed. Overwhelmed by the manliness and athleticism on display, Luz followed the dark-haired girl, Goha, into the night and behind the house.

Luz watched from a safe distance as Goha spoke a faint grayish light into existence over her head, just like the younger wizard had earlier, and started sifting through a rack full of animal skins and furs. She hummed to herself as she draped fur after skin after fur over her right arm, using her left to tuck another rebellious strand of hair behind her ear. When she was finished, she took her bounty into both arms and looked down at it contentedly, her blue eyes shining in the pale light of her magic. Luz could not avoid it: she was pretty.

Goha looked up and met Luz’s gaze. She froze completely and stared back at Luz, who stood partially in shadow, just beyond the light of her magic. Her face was hard to read, even with her magic light. Was she confused? Scared? Whatever look it was, she only held it for a split second before returning to herself. She spoke only a little and held out the load of skins and furs to Luz. Whatever the younger wizard had said to her and the old man, it must have included Luz not being able to speak their language. “Uh… sure.” Luz took some of the load into her arms and grunted as she hoisted it up to her chest. Goha began to laugh, but caught herself. Either this load was surprisingly heavy or Luz was surprisingly weak.

There was a crash from the front of the house. The girls raced back to find the old man’s shelf, emptied of all contents, lying face down in front of the doorway. The young man stood over it, pride gleaming in his dark eyes and his scars curving to make room for his smile. He went back in and they followed him. With the corner the shelf used to occupy now empty, Goha and Luz could now lay down their animal remains as a bed. Luz sat down on it. The furs were bristly and the skins were tough, but it would get her through the night. She looked at the opposite corner of the room, where the shelf’s contents had been hastily dumped. The two wizards picked through the pile, taking whatever they deemed most important and stuffing it into one of the bags the young wizard had brought with him from his boat. Luz looked up at Goha. Were they always like this? Goha shrugged and shook her head.

Luz woke up to the sun shining directly into her face. She groaned and pulled her furs over her head. She took a second to realize where she was. Her eyes shot open and she sprang into a sitting position. She was still in the old wizard’s house. Goha came in. The bag in her arms was filled with plant matter. Herbs, roots, and spices, either for cooking or, Luz could only hope, potion brewing, as well as kindling for the fire pit. Goha looked down at her and let out a universal “Oh!” of surprise. She called out to the younger wizard and motioned for Luz to go outside.

Luz stepped out. The wizard had just finished speaking with someone marginally better-dressed than him or the others; maybe a local nobleman of some sort; and approached Luz. As he did, he called out to the tree line behind him. A small hawk shot out from the leaves and perched on the end of his staff. Luz watched patiently. Considering what else she had seen him do, she wasn’t amazed, but still impressed. He held out a hand to the bird and spoke the name he told Luz on the boat; the name everyone else she met called him. He then placed his hand on his chest and spoke, mimicking what Luz had said to him in heavily accented English. “My name is…”

Luz said the wizard’s name, knowing what it meant for the first time: “Sparrowhawk.”


	2. The Rule of Names

“Sparrowhawk isn’t his real name?!” Luz shot up to her feet, disturbing the low-reaching branches of the young birch she had been resting underneath. Goha looked back at her, surprised by the sudden outburst.

“Of course not,” Goha said. She kneeled over and wrapped her hands around the base of the cattail’s stem. “Nobody in Earthsea freely gives out their names. Least of all wizards.” She pulled back and yanked the cattail out of the ground. “You’ve been here long enough to know that.”

“I guess I have, huh?” Luz walked to the edge of the pond and looked at her reflection. She pulled her bangs away from her eyes. If she was judging the phases of the moon right, she had been in the world called Earthsea, on the island called Gont, in the village called Re Albi for just about two months now. Enough time to begin grasping one of its native languages, called hardic, and enough time for her hair to start growing out. “He and Ogion have never told me why, though.”

“Really?” Goha set the cattail aside and got to work on the next one. “Why is that?”

Luz blushed. “Because I never knew how to ask.” Goha laughed. Luz blushed harder. “Hey, come on!” She leaned back against the young birch. “Hardic is only my third language.”

“And you speak it very well. You’re learning a lot faster than I did when I first came to Gont. Putting aside your accent, you might pass for a native speaker in just a few more months.”

“Yeah. A few more months…” Luz’s voice trailed off. Her thoughts turned to her home and mother. Her poor mother. She wondered if she still didn’t know her daughter was missing. If she wouldn’t find out until the moment the bus arrived without her daughter. Or maybe she already knew. Maybe she was searching for her right now.

Goha changed the subject. “I take it Sparrowhawk and Master Ogion haven’t taught you much about magic then?”

“Uh, no,” Luz said. “I haven’t been able to talk about it.”

Goha plucked the second cattail and smiled. “Do you think you are now?”

“I guess I-” Luz stopped, realizing what Goha meant a second later than she should have. “Oh! Okay! Yes!”

“Sit.” Luz sat back down cross-legged against the young birch and Goha sat in front of her. “I can at least tell you what I know. Is there anywhere you’d like to start?”

“Names! Can you tell me why names are such a big deal in Earthsea?”

“Right. Well…” Goha gathered her thoughts, rubbing her chin. “Names… are magic. And everything about magic stems from names. True names.”

“True names.”

“True names. In the Old Speech, the language of the dragons-”

“Which are definitely real?”

“Definitely real. Everything-” She cut herself off. “Well… most things have a name in the Old Speech. If someone knows someone or something’s true name, they have power over that person or object. For example,” she held up a pebble, “if you were to ask a dragon to name this, it would call it _tolk_.” She passed it to Luz. “Looks like a rock? Feels like a rock?” Luz turned it over in her hands and nodded. “But what if I were to say it looked and felt like a wheat cake?”

Goha spoke a few words of the Old Speech, _tolk_ among them, and the rock vanished and was replaced by a wheat cake in an instant. “Woah!” Luz turned it over again. Goha wasn’t kidding. It looked and felt exactly like a wheat cake. Luz lifted it up to her mouth to taste.

“No, no!” Goha grabbed Luz’s arms and pulled them away from her mouth. “Looks can be deceiving. Watch.” She took the rock-turned-wheat cake back and flung it to the pond. It skipped across the water’s surface and sunk to the bottom in a very un-wheat cake fashion.

“So, you can use magic to make rocks look like food?” Luz asked, smiling and starry-eyed.

“I also know how to make food look like rocks.”

“Classic prank.” They both laughed.

“Magic can do a lot more than that, of course, but most mages are hesitant to use it for anything beyond illusions.”

“The day I came to Earthsea, I saw Sparrowhawk turn into a bird and fly. Was that just an illusion?”

“Probably not, though he likely wouldn’t be keen on showing it to you again. Mages can genuinely change their shape, outright turning into a bird instead of just looking like one, but it comes at a cost. The more time you spend as a bird, the more like a bird you become, mentally.” Goha looked up at the young birch. A sparrow sat perching on its top branch. “He told me that happened to him once. That he became so like a hawk that he couldn’t change himself back without Master Ogion’s help. It’s apparently not a story he’s fond of sharing…”

Sparrowhawk wasn’t the only one in Re Albi who wasn’t keen on sharing his backstory. Luz watched Goha curl her long black hair around her pale finger. She looked so different from anyone else Luz had met in Earthsea. She sounded different, too. She teased Luz for her accent and grasp on hardic, but she clearly wasn’t a native speaker either. Some nights Luz would wake up to Goha screaming in her bed, still asleep; switching back and forth between hardic and her native language, shouting names and pleading: “Thar! Penthe! Manan! Please forgive me!” She would never speak of her nightmares when she was awake, and Luz learned quickly not to press the subject.

“What about the little light you can cast above your head?” Luz asked, breaking the silence. “If it’s just an illusion, then how is it able to illuminate its surroundings? Or cast shadows?”

“Oh. Well, um…” Goha rubbed the back of her neck and looked away. Had Luz picked too hard of a question?

“If you don’t know-”

“It’s fine, I just need to find the words.” She thought for a while. “Light isn’t an object or a person. It’s a power, an inherent aspect of the world. A wizard with skill equal to that power can call upon it in the Old Speech and summon it to him.” She spoke a word and her light; “werelight,” as she and the others called it; appeared above her head, very faint and hard to see in broad daylight, but still there. “That’s the abridged version, anyway.”

“Cool,” Luz said, staring nearly directly into the sun. “Do you think Sparrowhawk or Ogion could conjure a bigger light?”

“Maybe. They speak a lot of equilibrium and balance, and how especially grand spells risk throwing off that balance.”

“What would happen if equilibrium was thrown off?”

“I don’t know.”

There was another pause. Luz feared that Goha’s magical knowledge was beginning to run dry. She chose to change the topic, setting it back to what it was before: “So if Sparrowhawk isn’t his true name, then what is it?”

“It’s a use-name. If someone knows your true name, you’re at their mercy, so people in Earthsea go by use-names with most people instead. True names are only shared with one’s closest friends and family.”

“Do you know his true name?”

“I do.”

“Would he be mad if you shared it with me?”

“Yes. Indescribably so.”

“Oh.” Luz slumped her shoulders back and thought. “Is Goha your true name?”

Goha shook her head. “No.”

“Hm…” Luz thought some more. “Is Luz my true name?”

Goha took a second to respond. “I… suppose. You were given your name when you were born?”

“Yes.”

“In your home world, where magic and dragons don’t exist.”

“As far as science can prove.”

“But I was also given my true name at birth, from a culture that practiced no magic…” Luz perked up and leaned forward. Backstory! Not much, but it was something. “They have been pressing you not to share your name with other people. And you’ve been very good about it!” Luz beamed with pride. “Maybe Luz is your true name after all. If anyone would know, it would be Sparrowhawk and Master Ogion.”

“In that case…” Luz got up and stretched. “I should come up with my own use-name!” Goha stood up after her and brushed her skirt off.

“Why? Do you have some sort of adventure in the works?”

“I’d like to be able to go home. As much as I like hanging out with you and talking about magic… I miss my mom.” Goha said nothing, as she always did whenever Luz talked about going home and seeing her mother. “How did you come up with yours?”

“Oh, that- that’s not important.” Goha looked away and blushed. “It’s dumb.”

“Come on. You know my real name, the least you can do is tell me how you got your use-name.” Luz grinned and leaned in. Goha smiled, and after a moment relented.

“It’s just the first two syllables I could think to say after Sparrowhawk and I landed on Havnor.” Luz laughed. Goha’s embarrassment quickly fell away and she soon started laughing with Luz and mocking her past self: “G-Go… huh?”

“How about I name myself after an animal, like Sparrowhawk? How about,” she paused for dramatic effect and lowered her voice menacingly, “Sea Otter?”

Goha laughed. “I don’t know. You might run the risk of scaring anyone you meet named Clam or Mussel.” She knelt down and picked up the bunch of cattails she and Luz had spent the morning collecting. “Why don’t we get these back to Master Ogion? You can share all your crazy ideas with me on the way there.”


End file.
